The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. Today I had a hair transplant. I had to be there at 8:30 am. I stuffed a few nuts in my pockets, like a squirrel, to eat on the way there. I got out the door and started running. The streets were strangely quiet because it's a Saturday.

I got there at 8:31 am, one minute late. I was out of breath. The receptionist greeted me. The other staff were still getting ready. The receptionist gave me a tablet: "To make you calm," she said. I didn't know what it was, but I swallowed it with water. I worried about what the tablet was. I don't take drugs so I'm probably a lightweight. What was going to happen when this drug started taking effect? Maybe I would have no memory of the events to come, just several embarrassing stories recounted to me by the staff later, like how I threw all my clothes off, climbed up onto the roof, and refused to come down.

They took me into an office. A woman draped a big black sheet around me like they do at the hairdresser's. Then she shaved my head. It was just like being at the hairdresser's. Then again, I hadn't been to a hairdresser's in nearly ten years on account of being bald. So maybe this wasn't like the hairdresser's at all. Maybe modern hairdressers have robots that cut your hair. I honestly wouldn't have known.

And all the while, I was waiting for this drug to kick in and worrying about what it was going to do to me.

The doctor came in. He drew on my head with a marker. "I hope that's not a permanent marker," I said as a joke. No, I didn't actually say that. I didn't want to open my mouth in case I started saying weird things because of the tablet they'd given me.

The chairs looked just like giant baseball gloves. What the hell? Why would the doctor have chairs shaped like baseball gloves? Were they real, or had I started hallucinating? No, as far as I could tell, they were real. But would I have noticed them if I hadn't taken that unknown tablet earlier? Or had I noticed them because I was off my rocker on Valium? I didn't know. I had never taken Valium before so I didn't know what it was like. I didn't even know if what I took was Valium.

The receptionist took me to the end of the corridor where they had a white background on the wall for taking photos. She took some photos of my head, from all different angles.

Then I went into the surgery room. So this was where I would be spending the next eight to ten hours. There was an operating table in the middle of the room. There was also a big TV hanging from the ceiling. "You'll be able to watch Netflix!" the receptionist had told me, as if that was a big deal. But I didn't see a big TV as a good thing. I saw it as a bad thing. I had thought about bringing a book instead but then decided against it. Books are probably not sterile.

There were two surgical assistants.

"How are you today?" said one.

"Good, thanks!" I said in what I hoped was a cheery voice. I added, "I was looking forward to this!"

"You look scared," she said.

I was scared. I had never done anything like this. The most surgery I'd ever had was wisdom tooth surgery. And that was bad enough for me, thanks.

They told me to lie on the table, face down. There was a hole for my face to go into. As I lay on the bed and put my face in the hole, I saw there was a TV built into the floor. This one was playing a TV show about Will Smith. Except it wasn't The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. It was another one. He was older and he was going about kayaking and climbing mountains. He must have been going through a midlife crisis. A bit like me, getting this hair transplant.

The surgeon came in. He stepped onto the TV in the floor. Now his right foot was blocking Will Smith's face.

"You'll fall asleep for sure." That's what the receptionist had told me a few days ago. That I'd fall asleep during the surgery. Well, I didn't feel sleepy. If anything, I felt wide awake. Also, the padding around the head hole was digging into my face.

"I'm just going to put some anaesthetic into your head," said the surgeon. "This might hurt a little bit."

Then he started poking my head with a needle. This fucking hurt.

Now it felt weirdly like a pizza cutter? It felt like he was attacking my head with a pizza cutter. But a pointy pizza cutter, one with spikes sticking out of it.

Next, the surgeon started taking out hairs from the back and sides of my head. I was still wide awake. When was this drug kicking in? When was I going to fall into a deep and restful slumber? Never, it seemed.

After about an hour, they told me to lie on my side. This was a relief as I could finally take my face out of the hole in the operating table. The padding around the hole hurt more than whatever they were using to get the hairs out, which didn't hurt at all because of the anesthetic.

They put a blanket over me, "to keep you warm". Weirdly, they put the blanket over my face as well? Maybe it was to help me sleep. Well, it didn't work. I was still wide awake.

My job was to stay perfectly still. Which was easy, really. If they could give me hair in exchange for staying still, then I could stay still, no problem.

This blanket was making me hot though. I was too hot. I wished they'd take it off.

"Is it okay to take the blanket off?" I asked, from under the blanket.

"What?" said the nurse.

I lifted my head from the table, making the nurse jump in fright. "I said, is it okay to take the blanket off?" I asked again.

"Don't move your head!" the nurse scolded me.

"Sorry," I said. I put my head back down. Fuck. Staying still was harder than I thought.

They took the blanket off.

It took them three hours to take the follicles out. They had removed 2,700 follicles from my head. But where were the follicles? I didn't know. I assumed they were in a machine somewhere. I probably should have done some more research about how hair transplants worked before going through with this.

I was allowed to move again. Now it was time to sit upright so they could put the hairs back in. "Here's the remote," said the surgeon, handing me a TV remote. I flicked through the options on the TV. There was Netflix, YouTube, the Disney channel. He had everything.

I put on the latest Marvel TV show, Hawkeye. I soon found out that it was boring. But that was okay, because if I put something interesting on the TV, then the nurses might start watching it and get distracted from my hair transplant. The number one priority now was that they do a good job so I didn't end up looking like Frankenstein's monster. Imagine if I put on The Simpsons, and while the surgeon was laughing, he implanted hairs into my nose by accident? Then I'd have hairs growing out of my nose for the rest of my life. Though come to think of it, I already do have hairs growing out my nose. They're called nose hairs.

I wasn't allowed to move again. So I didn't want to risk moving my arm to change the channel. If I moved my arm, then my head might move as well, and it could fuck up the hair transplant. They had warned me once already to keep still. I didn't want to risk another warning.

Then we stopped to have lunch. They gave me a bottle of water and a massive sandwich with an omelette inside. I ate it alone in an office while stretching my stiff neck.

Then we went back to surgery to implant the last of the hairs.

After the fourth episode of Hawkeye, a movie called Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings started playing automatically. So I started watching it. It was pretty good actually.

The two assistants were still putting the hairs into the top of my head.

"How are you feeling?" asked one of the assistants.

"Good," I said. "I can't feel a thing. Except for my neck, which is killing me."

"Well, just hold on a little longer. We're almost finished now."

And then before I knew it, it was over. Now it was 5 pm. The whole thing had taken about eight hours. My only regret was that I didn't get to finish watching the movie.

The assistants looked happy. "Your head's very soft so we got all the hairs in quickly," she explained. "Now we get to go home early".

My head was soft? I didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I hoped they hadn't accidentally stabbed my brain while they were putting the hairs in my soft head. I didn't want any brain damage because I'm already stupid enough as it is.

Girlfriend came to pick me up. She got a shock when she saw me.

"What do you think?" I said.

"It's uh.... yeah," she said.

I hadn't seen my head yet. There were no mirrors in this place. I soon discovered that this was for a reason. It was to stop patients from screaming in terror.

On the way back home, we stopped at a pharmacy because I needed to buy some antibiotics and anti-inflammatories. There, in the pharmacy, I saw myself in a mirror for the first time. And Jesus Christ, it was like the front of my head was covered in blood-poked holes. It was covered in little dots of blood. And that was just the front. The back of my head was even worse. The entire back of my head was covered in spots of blood. Hundreds of red spots. It looked like I had a horrendous skin disease.

"It's a hair transplant," I told the pharmacist.

"Oh," she said. "I've always wondered what a hair transplant looks like."

I still didn't feel much pain because of the anesthetic. But that was going to wear off soon.

Finally, here are some before and after photos.

Before (this morning)

After